This blog is about my new Civil War history, Our War: Days and Events in the Fight for the Union.

Friday, May 9, 2014

Chancellorsville (2): 'The Johnnies were close at our heels and in advance of us on the right and the left'

Part 1 of this series on Richard W. Musgrove of the 12th New
Hampshire Volunteers at Chancellorsville is here. The regiment took more
casualties in the battle than any other regiment, Union or Confederate.

Alfred Waud's drawing of Chancellorsville on May 1, 1863. The Chancellor House is at far right. (Library of Congress)

On the morning of May 3, 1863, after more than an hour alone under fire near a clearing called Fairview, what was left of the 12th New
Hampshire was at last ordered to retreat. As described by one survivor, Sgt.
Richard W. Musgrove, the retreat bore much in common with the fight.

“The Johnnies were
close at our heels and in advance of us on the right and the left,” he wrote in
his memoir. “While on the retreat, several of our few survivors fell.”

He and the others, perhaps 25 in number at the start, ran from
the woods and across an open field toward the Chancellor House. A comrade to
his right fell with a scream just as a ball struck Musgrove’s musket in the stock,
knocking it out of his hand. He ran on. It was about half a mile to the
Chancellor House, and it was a miracle to him that anyone from the 12th made
it.

Gen. Dan Sickles, 3rd Corps commander

“It seems a wonder that any man could pass through the storm
of shot and shell that swept this field and live,” he wrote. “The air was full
of flying missiles and the ground was plowed up in all directions.”

Wounded and dead men covered the plain, making the dash of
the 12th more treacherous. “Many a harrowing scene presented itself,” Musgrove wrote.
Two soldiers were helping a man whose hip had been shot away. Musgrove could
see the man’s joints work in their sockets as he tried to move along.

Gen. Dan Sickles, the 3rd Corps commander, was forming a new
battle line near the Chancellor House just as it came into Musgrove’s view. His
gunners were about to fire on the charging rebels, apparently not noticing the
Union men fleeing before them. Sickles noticed and ordered the artillery to
hold its fire.

When the remnant of the 12th reached the Union battle line,
Sickles ordered its commanding officer, Lt. Edwin E. Bedee, to have his men fall
in and help stop the rebel charge. Bedee told Sickles they had no ammunition,
and Sickles ordered them to the rear.

They passed the Chancellor House and entered the wood behind
it. Musgrove lay on the ground and fell asleep. When he awoke, a comrade told
him two women rescued from the house had just been escorted past. During the
retreat the men of the 12th had seen the destruction of the brick walls of the
house, which was being used as a hospital. It caught fire soon after they
passed. As soldiers helped evacuate the wounded, an officer found the two women
hiding in the cellar.

A well to supply the house stood nearby. Parched soldiers
crowded around it, ignoring the shells and balls passing by them. Some were
wounded and perhaps even killed. “My first impulse was to obtain water here
myself,” Musgrove wrote, “but I quickly took in the situation and concluded to
move on.”

Col. Hiram Berdan

He and his comrades rested in the woods and then started toward
the Rappahannock. They had crossed just the day before at U.S. Ford behind Col.
Hiram Berdan, famed for his sharpshooters but a 3rd Corps brigade commander at
Chancellorsville.

Walking back now, Musgrove overtook 22-year-old John Mooers,
a private in his company from Sanbornton. Mooers had been wounded in the foot.
Musgrove joined another comrade who was helping him to the rear. Along the way
they asked two surgeons to dress the wound, but both hurried on. Finally,
Musgrove stopped a man on horseback who took Mooers to a field hospital near
the river.

The hospital was the large, two-story house of a Virginia
planter. Wounded men filled the rooms. Perhaps a thousand more lay on the grass
outside. Surgeons helped those they could and sent them across the river to more
permanent hospitals.

Musgrove had a special mission at the hospital. After his musket
was damaged during the fight near Fairview, he had picked one up off the
ground. He saw the mark of his tent-mate, Louis Rowe, on the musket. He looked
for Rowe and, not finding him, assumed he had been wounded and gone back.

In vain Musgrove searched every room in the house for Rowe. Then
he roved among the wounded on the lawn staring into every face he could see.
Suddenly he saw Rowe’s.

Rowe told him what had happened. During the fight he was
about to fire when a rebel ball “ploughed a furrow along the back of his left
hand and then entered his right breast.” He dropped his musket and knapsack and
set out for the river, three miles away.

Rowe was cold. Musgrove made him tea and gave him
his overcoat. He found a stretcher and bearers to carry Rowe across the pontoon
bridge.

After Musgrove rejoined his comrades, his thoughts drifted from
the terrible scenes he had witnessed. His mind “flashed to far-away home, and
as I thought of the sad news that must be borne them, tears came freely, and I
realized more than ever before that the immediate actors of the war were not
the only sufferers in this great conflict. “

He and a comrade joined their pieces of shelter tent, but
without his blanket and overcoat, he shivered all night. The men were called
out after heavy firing on the picket line at 2 a.m., and after that, Musgrove lay
awake till reveille.

Brig. Gen. Amiel W. Whipple was mortally wounded.

Roll call disclosed the 12th’s numbers: four officers and 97
men fit for duty. They formed into four companies, one under each officer. Col.
Samuel M. Bowman, their brigade commander, started with them toward the front.
They reached an enormous breastwork and convinced themselves the Union army
could hold this position. They were told to relax. Many men used gun carriages as gambling tables.

The biggest danger in their new position was sharpshooters.
One of them shot Amiel W. Whipple, the 12th’s division commander. Whipple died
three days later and was buried in Proprietors’ Cemetery in Portsmouth, N.H.,
where he had been stationed before the war.

On the morning of May 5, just before noon, the men of the
12th were ordered to a fatigue detail. They were to leave their arms, knapsacks and
haversacks. They marched through the woods and started digging trenches from which Union troops could resist a flank attack.

It began to pour. Though exhausted, the men kept digging even as water
pooled in the trenches. At about 8 p.m., they were ordered to retrieve their
gear. In darkness they walked gingerly through the woods to the road
between U.S. Ford and the breastwork where they had left their equipment.

A triumphant Hooker arrives at Chancellorsville on
April 30. Musgrove blamed him for not committing all
his troops during the battle. Many men resented his
having ordered the retreat on May 5.

At that moment they saw for themselves that Joseph B. Hooker’s
army was retreating. The artillery was speeding toward the river. The digging detail argued over whether
to join the retreat or look for their muskets and knapsacks. “The officers were
unequal to the occasion, and their command rapidly disappeared, every man
striking out for himself,” wrote Musgrove.

He and Sgt. Alonzo Jewett, a comrade from Bristol, N.H., returned
to the front, where they found only chaos. They had seen no infantry on the
road, and they saw none here. “Where our brigade had gone no one knew,” Musgrove
wrote. Soldiers were “destroying everything that could be of value to the enemy.
Knapsacks were rifled and then burned, and muskets were heated and bent by a
blow against a tree.” He found a haversack containing food, but the 12th’s
arms and equipment were lost.

The men set out for the pontoon bridges across the
Rappahannock. “But such a road!” Musgrove wrote. The artillery had churned a wide swath into knee-deep mud. Musgrove fell in the mud and wallowed in it until Jewett helped him up. For the rest of his
life he wondered if he would have sunk and died had he been alone.

They reached a clearing near the river at midnight and
warmed themselves and dried their clothes over burning fence rails. They scanned the passing infantry column, searching for their brigade. At 4 a.m. the 3rd Corps at
last appeared, and they found their place.

In stops and starts they marched away.
Some officers “who were not over conspicuous in battle” cursed them for not closing
ranks. “More dead than alive,” the men reached their old camp after a 10-mile
march.

As they sat before a fire that morning, their defeat set in.
“Oh! our hearts were sad and heavy,” wrote Musgrove, “for more than half our
number had fallen in battle.” In the case of the 12th New Hampshire this was no
exaggeration. Of 558 men engaged, 317 had been left behind, dead, dying,
wounded or missing.

Figuring out who among the casualties belonged in which category
took time. Louis Rowe, Musgrove’s tent-mate, rejoined the 12th in the fall. He returned the overcoat his friend had lent him at
Chancellorsville. Musgrove kept it as a souvenir and did not wash out his
comrade’s blood. In 1882, at the age of 44, 19 years after being shot, Rowe
died of complications from his chest wound.